Canopus Edius and Adobe Premiere are the two most popular programs we supply. Both have good points and bad points so how do you decide which to choose? This document is a brief run down of the major advantages of both.

Edius Pro

Edius' biggest strength is its stability. We have customers who have said they have never had a crash. It is also quick. Its probably fair to say that you can get a job done quicker with Edius once you know how to use it than with other programs. It has the best realtime performance of all the editing programs and also supports new formats of video before other programs.

Adobe Premiere

Edius definitely scores for stability over Premiere but this is not to say Premiere will crash a lot. I would not be surprised to have a crash during a day of intensive editing for example, but if it is crashing every 10 minutes then there is something wrong with the computer. It is not so good at large projects either - a 3 hour timeline may need to be split into several sections rather than done as one lump. Premiere has got better in successive versions, however, and CS3 is better than the previous ones.

The realtime performance only reaches near to the same level as Edius if used with a Matrox card - on its own it cannot manage a HD cross dissolve in real time, for example.

Where it excels its its breadth of features. Edius probably does 95% of what you want with your editing - colour correction, picture in picture, chromakey etc. With Premiere there is the capacity to do the extra 5% because there are more variations of filters and plug-ins and with the dynamic link to After Effects you can achieve more in some ways that with Edius.

For DVD writing Premiere is superior as well - Edius' built-in DVD writing is simple and Adobe Encore, which ships with Premiere, is far superior. We have many people editing with Edius and using Encore for their DVD writing, and as they can only buy Encore with Premiere these days they end up with a copy of Premiere as well!

Editing Formats

Edius supports more formats than Premiere Pro, and supports newer formats quicker. A good example is Sony XDCam. Premiere does not natively support even the current format of XDCam and will not support Sony XDCam-EX for some time. You can add support for these formats by using a Matrox Axio but this only works in a desktop system and a typical system would be around £4,500.

Premiere Pro does natively support JVC’s HDVPro 720p @ 25fps format - although in our experience this does not work well without buying either a Matrox RT.X2/Axio or Cineform Neo/Aspect HD.

Edius Pro edits DV, MPEG1 and 2, QuickTime, Windows Media, and all can be mixed on the timeline. HDV is supported both in native transport streams and using Canopus own HQ codec for slicker editing, and DVCPro50, DVCPROHD P2 and XDCam are supported in the broadcast version. MPEG2 can be added to a timeline after being ripped direct from DVDs, and audio tracks can be ripped from CDs.

All the formats can be mixed on the timeline with realtime scaling of the different sizes. You can even add NTSC to a PAL project (and vice versa) and Edius will automatically produce a smooth, and not jerky, video.

Capture and clips

Both programs handle clips, project management and recapture in a pretty similar way. Importing and recapturing EDLs in Edius is slightly easier than Premiere Pro, but on the whole they are comparable.

Clips are viewed in the source window as you would expect and Premiere does have an edge as it allows you to view the sound as a waveform before it is added to the timeline, or to turn off the picture and see the sound part of the clip before it is added to the timeline - both very useful.

Edius can also take footage off DVDs (non-copy protected DVDs) and music from CDs, Premiere does not. We have even had customers buy Edius as an add-on for their Premiere system just to be able to rip footage off DVD for re-editing!

Sound Editing Accuracy

In terms of accuracy Premiere Pro can edit audio down to the sample level, which can be as small as a 48,000th of a second. Edius edits to the frame or 25th of a second, like Premiere 6.5.

Premiere can also edit in full 5.1 surround sound (although you need an extra plug-in to get this sound mix on to a DVD as it does not encode to Dolby Digital without this). It also has lots of other useful little audio filters - like the audio gain dialogue box which examines the sound and sets the gain based on the peaks in the sound - useful for quickly boosting the level of the audio without making it too loud.

The sound editing of Premiere Pro is undoubtedly superior to Edius; Edius sound editing can best be compared to Premiere 6.5 abilities, although for many people this is enough - and if you want more you could always buy Adobe Sound Booth os Sony Sound Forge and do high quality sound edits there - even if you are editing with Edius.

Effects

There is no doubt that Premiere beats Edius for the sheer breadth and versatility of effects supplied. Premiere has a huge range of colour correction filters, transitions, track mattes, garbage mattes, lightning, lens flare and various distorts, but poor 3D and Chromakey. Add hardware like the Matrox RT.X2 and you get more filters at full quality and decent 3D effects. The Matrox realtime Chromakey also bring the quality of keying up to the level of that achieved with Edius.

Edius does not have as many filters and lacks keyframing on some of the effects but what it does it does very well and can play more filters in realtime than Premiere. This does have a real benefit when editing as you can try more options and see how they work (which you can only judge properly when they are moving at full speed) without having to wait to render.

Edius also does not handle still images too well unless you add Canopus Imaginate. If you add a still and apply a Canopus effect, to do a still montage, for example, Edius will first change the resolution of the still image to match the project - so a nice 4000 x 3000 pixel still suddenly becomes only 720 x 576 (in a DV project) and then when you pan and scan the quality deteriorates very quickly. The answer with Edius is to buy Imaginate - a plug-in design by Canopus to do high quality image pans in 2D and 3D, which is also easy to use and you just drop it in the Edius timeline, and with any luck it plays in realtime.

Premiere Pro does pan and scans on hi res images naturally without extra plug-ins, although the difference is really not that huge as long as you remember to buy Imaginate with your Edius system!

Edius' keyframable slow motion works in realtime, where as the Premiere version has to render to be seen properly.

Premiere has more plug-ins available although both Boris and ProDad plug-ins work in both programs.

Edius does include Xplode Pro - a collection of fancy 3D transitions. Many of our customers use these kinds of effects as their customers insist on them. Premiere only has a couple of 3D effects as standard and even adding a Matrox RT.X2 only adds in a few more.

Titles

Premiere Pro has an excellent Titler but you can only animate the titles using standard Premiere motion paths. For more complex animated titles you would use After Effects - which does come with many pre-made templates, and offers you huge amounts of options.

Edius’ Quick Titler can do realtime, smooth rolls and crawls or long lists of text (which Premiere cannot). Edius’ other titler, Inscriber Title Motion, can do 2D, and even 3D fully animated titles - again in realtime. Title Motion is not the most friendly titler in the world, so will take a bit of effort to learn, however, its animation capabilities are huge.

DVD writing

Edius will write a DVD with basic still menus straight off the timeline. However, to make a more complex DVD you must use another program - and many people chose to use Adobe Encore.

Since Encore comes with Premiere Pro 3 you have extensive DVD writing available straight away. The two programs also talk to each other - if you add chapter markers to your Premiere timeline they become chapter markers in Encore, for example.

Encore is also the best program to write Blu-ray discs currently.

Since Encore is only available with Premiere it costs £570 +VAT to add it to an Edius system. If you already own an old copy of Premiere you can get it via an upgrade which costs £199 +VAT, however.

Multicamera

Both programs now have a multicamera mode. Which is better is actually debatable - Edius version can handle up to 8 cameras and outputs to your TV/monitor without extra hardware - Premiere's can only handle 4 cameras and only outputs to TV if you use a Matrox card in the system (most people will do this).

Integration

One of Premiere Pro’s greatest strengths, and a killer feature for some, is how it works with other Adobe programs. You can make chapter points for Encore while editing in Premiere, put After Effects compositions directly on the Premiere timeline, and right click to send clips to Soundbooth for audio sweetening.

Edius does none of this. This does not mean that you cannot use Edius with After Effects, Encore or Audition - in fact we would recommend these as extra programs even if editing in Edius. The Canopus/Grass Valley hardware (NX for HDV and SP for HDV) even comes with video out plug-ins for some of the Adobe programs, it just takes a bit more effort to get footage from one program to another.

Customisation level

Very good for both - you can save screen layouts & keyboard mapping. Edius scores slightly since you can customise the buttons as well as keyboard short cuts and save different user profiles so that each user can instantly setup the interface the way they prefer and carry their settings from computer to computer.

Flexible output options

Both can output to a wide variety of formats, and have excellent MPEG output with 2 pass VBR encoding. Canopus output using ProCoder Express has a slight edge because it can convert PAL to NTSC and vice versa.

Cost

If you want to edit HDV then you really need to add a card into the system that allows you to see the picture while you edit at full quality (see our guide to HDV editing for more information on this).

Adobe have the Matrox RT.X2 and Axio LE, Edius have the Edius NX for HDV and SP for HDV. An Edius based system is reasonably cheaper than an RT.X2. Check here for some sample prices on DVC systems.

Which should you choose?

Both systems are very good. If you like Premiere you should probably stick with it - Premiere Pro, especially coupled to an RT.X2 is a very powerful system and can handle nearly everything you want to throw at it.

On the other hand Edius does all the basics very well, is a very stable platform and we have a lot of customers happily using it. If you want more advanced effects, audio or DVD writing you can still add the Adobe Production Studio and just use Edius and not Premiere for your editing!

If you are undecided then give us a ring to discuss your options.